


sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool: drowning thoughts (remix)

by californianNostalgia



Series: the grace of gods is a grace that comes by violence [3]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Divergence of the Very First Canon, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, godswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/californianNostalgia/pseuds/californianNostalgia
Summary: For Hera, the Cyclops crafted the Helm of Darkness, which was received with wicked jubilation. For Demeter, a Trident, and the goddess silently weighed the great spear in her hand.To Hestia, they offered the Master Bolt.(In which Zeus is a nameless hippie, Percy Jackson's greatest weapon is plant matter, and Thalia Grace walks into the River Styx with Luke Castellan's smile fixed in her mind's eye.)
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Jason Grace & Piper McLean & Leo Valdez, Luke Castellan/Thalia Grace
Series: the grace of gods is a grace that comes by violence [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1493201
Comments: 7
Kudos: 169





	sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool: drowning thoughts (remix)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An abridged retelling of the events of [a fact easily forgotten (we named our crowns ourselves)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21090359).

Here was a fact easily forgotten. Kronos did not swallow his firstborn immediately.

Rhea had nudged them outside, newborn child and father. Kronos had told Hestia stories of how the Titans had taken the world from the Sky and made it their own. She was fascinated—not by the tale, but by the way his voice slowly climbed in excitement, his face and hands taking on a life she hadn't seen on him before. The lifeless eyes that had gazed upon his newborn daughter only now gained life, in the recounting of conquests gone by.

He smiled upon the conclusion of the story. She asked for another. 

Her siblings remembered their father because they feared him, despised him, yearned to forget him. Hestia remembered Kronos in a way her brothers and sisters did not. She kept the memories of him, carefully folded and archived, as a lesson.

Those who were dependent on past victories risked static compliance. The fall from power did not begin with a herald of trumpets. All it took was the one flaw, the single chink in the armor.

Hestia was going to be nothing like him.

* * *

“You will be a great hero,” Rhea liked to say. “You will save your brothers and sisters from the Cannibal King.”

“It was foretold,” whispered the naiads.

“It will be so,” agreed the satyrs.

Zeus closed his eyes. The silhouette of Mount Othrys stamped itself on the underside of his eyelids in permanent ink.

At the age of sixteen, Zeus traded away the haleness of his body and mind to rescue his siblings from the King Cannibal. When Kronos glared at him with murderous rage, moments away from losing consciousness, Zeus watched him in petrified relief and thought, _I’ve won_.

* * *

In a different world, the three younger brothers were chosen to wield the greatest weapons ever created. In this world, the Elder Cyclops bowed to the three older sisters first, for age was power and strength trumped prejudice.

For Hera, the Cyclops crafted the Helm of Darkness, which was received with wicked jubilation. For Demeter, a Trident, and the goddess silently weighed the great spear in her hand.

To Hestia, they offered the Master Bolt. Its leaping sparks bit into her palms and trickled lightning into her blood.

Hades watched, expression black in poorly hidden jealousy. Poseidon laughed, shaking with rising hysteria.

Zeus closed his eyes against the lightning in his sister’s hands.

* * *

The years passed slowly.

Zeus was clinical in the fiery destruction he wrought. Poseidon was a bloody fighter, teetering on the edge of cackling insanity. Hades broke spear shafts in skulls and tore daggers through golden bodies.

Hera was the darkest fear known to sentience. Demeter was a hurricane. Hestia hefted her Bolt—the gruesome weapon that yearned to consume her, even now—and collected ragged streaks of silver from the sky until she held a sparking white death in her hands.

She stood atop Olympus as this living cataclysm, this unholy manifestation of power, sweeping her empty gaze over the world that flattened itself in fear. Then she pulled back her arm and hurled her blinding calamity at Mount Othrys. In one unearthly blow, the Lightning Goddess sheared off the top half of Othrys and pulverized the Titan King’s throne.

In a different world, the youngest children of Kronos took the tallest thrones, an usurpation. In this world, the eldest children grasped the highest honors, and it was almost a traditional succession, if not for the savaged pieces of Kronos they had cast into Tartarus in solemn vengeance.

Thus are the nature of coronations.

* * *

A thousand books could be filled with stories about the Queen of the Gods and her cold, unforgiving justice; about the bitter Lord of Olympus and his lovers promised to Death; about the Sea Goddess's unspoken grief for nameless mortals, lost in the memories of her mortal banishment; about the God of the Earth and his hopeless, unapologetic battles for his sanity; about the Lady of the Underworld and her long list of tragic affairs; and about the youngest child of Rhea, who had once stared up at the bottomless blue sky and dared to dream of freedom.

But this is not their story. This is the story of demigods in love, children who laughed and fought and screamed at each other with the weight of millennia settled on their backs like rotting cloaks.

Be warned. The weight of millennia is an ugly thing.

* * *

_Cabin 1 is dedicated to Hestia—Queen of the Gods, Lady of the Sky, Goddess of Lightning and Justice. Her cabin is kept empty, for Hestia has not and never will bear children of her own._

_Cabin 2 belongs to Hades—Lord of Olympus, God of Marriage, Order, and Family. He has few demigod children and fewer godly offspring, for he is technically meant to keep faithful to his wife. His affair with Persephone, a sea goddess, is a poorly hidden secret._

_Cabin 3 belongs to Demeter—Queen of Atlantis, Goddess of the Sea, Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Mother of Horses. Her feud with Hestia is a timeless one. Her children instinctively tread with caution around the Lightning Goddess._

_Cabin 4 belongs to Poseidon—Master of Agriculture, God of Earth and Seasons. He usually has many mortal children, but a recent Great Prophecy is preventing him from having more._

_Cabin 5 belongs to Aphrodite—Goddess of War, Violence, Battlelust, and Rage. She is the daughter of Ouranos, the Primordial Sky. She is married to Hephaestus in name only, for her true lover is Ares. Her children display great freedom in battlefields as well as in interpersonal relationships._

_Cabin 6 belongs to Hephaestus—God of Wisdom, Reason, Battle, and Strategy. He is the second son of Hera. The Lady of the Underworld feared she had threatened Hestia’s authority with Hephaestus's birth, so she transfigured the baby and tricked the father of the child into swallowing him. Hephaestus broke through his immortal father’s skull and emerged fully grown. Hephaestus’s children are similarly birthed from their father’s mind._

_Cabin 7 belongs to Artemis—Goddess of Archery, Art, Music, Prophecy, Healing, the Sun, etc. She has no demigod children of her own, as she prefers not to be weighed down with the burden of childbirth. Her chosen group of warrior maidens, the Hunters, sometimes use her cabin as a resting point._

_Cabin 8 belongs to Apollo—God of Archery, Wilderness, and the Moon. He often encroaches on his twin sister’s realm of power, recently having taken interest in guitar solos and haikus. He used to be the god of chastity, but after a memorable one-night-stand with Actaeon in the woods, he abandoned all pretenses and has since had many children._

_Cabin 9 belongs to Athena—Blacksmith of the Gods, Goddess of Fire, Forges, and Volcanoes. She was once thrown off Mount Olympus by Hades, who was jealous of Athena’s immortal father for having so many children. She is by no means conventionally attractive. Her children share the intelligence and creative drive of their mother._

_Cabin 10 belongs to Ares—God of Love, Beauty, Lust, and Desire. He is the first son of Hera and is in an ongoing relationship with Aphrodite. His children are beautiful and have a considerable temper as well as a certain way with words._

_Cabin 11 belongs to Dionysus—Messenger of the Gods, God of Travelers and Thieves. It is said he was once a demigod and was gifted immortality upon his invention of the first operational mailing system. His cabin accepts all of the unclaimed and the children of minor gods._

_Cabin 12 belongs to Hermes—Director of Camp Half-Blood, God of Wine and Madness. It is recommended that campers address him as Mr. H. He has very few children._

_There is no cabin for the Lady of the Underworld, for her realm is that of shadows and death, and she has borne no mortal children._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And I've been sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool_   
>  _For a while now_   
>  _Drowning my thoughts out with the sounds_
> 
> [Halsey - Young God](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUhJRQSs6UQ)


End file.
